Listening to the Wind

A mapmaker's vivid journey through the geography, ecology, and history of Ireland's Connemara region.

Here is Connemara, experienced at a walker's pace. From cartographer Tim Robinson comes the second title in the Seedbank series, a breathtakingly intimate exploration of one beloved place's geography, ecology, and history.

We begin with the earth right in front of his boots, as Robinson unveils swaths of fiontarnach—fall leaf decay. We peer from the edge of the cliff where Robinson's house stands on rickety stilts. We closely examine an overgrown patch of heather, a flush of sphagnum moss. And so, footstep by footstep, moment by moment, Robinson takes readers deep into this storied Irish landscape, from the "quibbling, contentious terrain" of Bogland to the shorelines of Inis Ní to the towering peaks of Twelve Pins.

Just as wild and essential as the countryside itself are its colorful characters, friends and legends and neighbors alike: a skeletal, story-filled sheep farmer; an engineer who builds bridges, both physical and metaphorical; a playboy prince and cricket champion; and an enterprising botanist who meets an unexpected demise. Within a landscape lie all other things, and Robinson rejoices in the universal magic of becoming one with such a place, joining with "the sound of the past, the language we breathe, and our frontage onto the natural world." Situated at the intersection of mapmaking and mythmaking, Listening to the Wind is at once learned and intimate, elegiac and magnificent—an exceptionally rich "book about one place which is also about the whole world" (Robert Macfarlane).

"Visitors to Connemara, that expanse of stony beauty in the west of Ireland, are often struck by its stillness. [This] collection of essays succeeds in the difficult task of staying true to the verities of a place on to which so many fantasies have been projected." —The Guardian